


Resistance

by varooooom



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M, Spoilers, ish, post - The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-24
Updated: 2014-04-24
Packaged: 2018-01-20 14:21:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1513685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/varooooom/pseuds/varooooom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky wants to try something new.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Resistance

**Author's Note:**

> Gotta counterbalance that cheerful nonsense with depressing shit, right? Don't worry, there's plenty more to come.

The urge has been hitting him a lot lately, at seemingly random times throughout the day - _seemingly_ , because the only common link he can find is that it happens when he's with Steve. Like when Steve makes breakfast in the morning and has a fresh plate at the ready and waiting for him when he scarfs down the first like he hasn’t really eaten in - well, seventy years. When they watch the news because Steve insists on knowing what’s going on in the world even though he can’t do anything to stop it, even though ‘ _it’s not your fault_ ’; it sounds hollow every time he says it, and the urge hits him then too. When they brush their teeth together, when they finish their morning jogs, when the nightmares come and neither of them are sleeping.

Random times. He doesn’t understand it.

Sergeant Barnes might, but the moments when he can feel that man in his fingertips are few and far between. He hears him sometimes, when he makes a joke that Steve laughs at without looking at him like it’s a Sunday miracle or when he screams at night and nothing can convince him they’re not in his head, they’re not tearing him open, ‘ _they’re not the ones that pulled the trigger_ ’.

The Winter Soldier doesn’t have an opinion, because it’s not even worth considering. It’s not a foreign concept or mystical notion; it registers as exactly _nothing_ , right alongside things like compassion, mercy, and sharing a late night glass of milk with his master. He hears him every day, in the silence before Steve wakes up or between the lingering gazes no one seems to realize he can see from across the room.

But when the urges come, he’s neither. Not Bucky, and not the Asset, but something caught inbetween. When he was younger, living in a time when he could drink or dance or smile whenever he wanted, indulgences were easy and often. A smaller Steve laughs and shakes his head in memories that don’t stay long enough for him to remember what shame feels like. In the past seventy years, though - indulgences didn't exist. They were null and void alongside that glass of milk, something that never registered because things like wants and desires were carved out of him with the rest of his humanity. Left in silver bowls that gleamed red in bad lighting, bottled up on screens that beeped too quietly to be heard over the last words of James Buchanan Barnes ( words like ‘ _no_ ’ and ‘ _stop_ ’ and a ‘ _Ste_ ’ that never got finished ).

Overall conclusion: he doesn’t understand a goddamn thing about what's happening to him. Sometimes he wants to ask, but the last time Steve had to explain why it’s okay for him to want to wear a certain color or not finish eating foods that taste bad, a little of the light in his bright blue eyes flickered away to those dark places where the good Captain keeps the things he won’t say out loud. For all the he doesn’t understand a lot about living in this world, he does know one thing: keeping that light alive is important. It's a nebulous concept that makes it impossible to form a battle strategy, with no discernible vantage point ( it's been very explicitly stated that he's not allowed to stab everyone that pisses them off ) and no tangible measure of success. He's spent more time as the Winter Soldier and even Bucky got swept up in his missions, but none of the voices in his head can tell him how to handle this one.

It doesn't occur to him that asking might be exactly what his best ( only ) friend would want him to do until weeks later.

Weeks of keeping his silence and answering Steve's concerned ' _we good_?' with cheeky remarks about which 'we' he's referring to. Weeks spent mentally tracking every time the urge hits, trying to discern a seemingly unfathomable pattern. Weeks that seem to tap loudly on the glass in his mind, begging it to break; he has a thousand different legitimate reasons at his disposal, yet this may be the one thing that actually drives him batshit insane.

He doesn't understand. But he wants to. He wants to understand _everything_ , and this has become the most pressing, almost an obsession. After weeks of suppressing it, he gives up and lets himself have something that's just for him and no one else.

He asks.

"Can I try something?"

They're in the kitchen fixing dinner ( it took awhile for him to be comfortable enough to help without staring too long at how easily a knife fits in his hand ), an average, unassuming Saturday evening. Steve planned out one of his new favorites, knowing without asking that he'd enjoy it, and it's that above all else that brings up the urge. Random, unprovoked; he simply blurts it out while Steve is washing vegetables in the sink.

It's so rare for him to ask for anything that, for a moment, Steve pauses to blink at him in surprise. He sets the carrots aside and shuts off the sink, drying his water-chilled hands off to face him in full. There's a certain formality to it that almost makes him want to laugh or change his mind or maybe even leave for a few hours, but he's set a goal and he's never once bailed on a mission. He's committed now.

"Yeah, of course. Whatever you want."

And then, all at once - it hits him. This has been killing him because the urges are an _instinct_ , a _need_ more than a want, some kind of inherent pull toward this man that is - inexplicably - the key to everything that is James Buchanan Barnes. 

It was easier, when he had the freedom to do it whenever he felt like it, or when he had no freedom to feel anything at all. This? This is hard. This is vulnerability, exposing a nerve, digging a slug out of his hip with his own fingers so that he can make a rendezvous point on time ( or equally as painful, at least ). This is Steve giving him way too much trust, too much patience and understanding and unconditional love. This is _hard_ , because he's overthinking something so terribly simple.

This is ridiculous. _Come on, Barnes._

He licks his lips, forces his body to relax, and stares at Steve's left shoulder as he places his hand there gently. At first, it just sits there as he tries to figure out what comes next, what he wanted out of this. There was something specific; Steve blinks at his hand, looks back up at him with the bright kitchen lighting caught in his eyes, and then he remembers. He squeezes his shoulder, smirks a little as he jostles Steve out of habit before pulling him into a one-armed hug.

It took way too long to get here, but it feels natural - it feels _easy_. When every day is a struggle, every conscious moment is a battle for lucidity, easy is good. This is hard, but it's ... good.

It gets better when Steve unexpectedly pulls him in deeper.

His hands raise to the center of his back, leaning down the short distance between them ( he remembers when Steve was smaller, then when he was too big, and now he wonders if this means he's finally caught up to the little boy who's always been his hero ) to rest his forehead on his shoulder. There's a desperation to the way Steve's arms wrap around him like this, he can feel it. It's not the first time they've hugged since he came crawling out of the shadows towards the first rays of sunlight, but it's definitely the first he's initiated of his own volition, simply because he could, because he wanted to. He can feel the weight of that in Steve's warmth pressed against him, the too-tight grip of fists in the back of his loose tee.

Sometimes, in very rare moments like these, he can see that he's not the only one torn in pieces and barely holding on. What a mess they've made of those two naive boys from the streets of Brooklyn, too cocksure and idealistic to know a goddamn thing about the real world. If they could've known, if they'd've seen what was waiting for them down that long and winding road - he wonders if they could've stayed like this instead. Their own apartment, leading their own lives. Holed away in their own corner of the world with nothing but each other.

He wonders if they could've been happy. When he closes his eyes, forgets Bucky and the Asset and holds on just as tightly, he wonders if they could be now.

He gets the urge to try.


End file.
